Mixed electroweak-QCD corrections to $e^+e^-\to HZ$ at Higgs factory

TL;DR

This paper calculates mixed electroweak-QCD corrections at NNLO for the Higgsstrahlung process at future Higgs factories, achieving about 1% precision, crucial for matching experimental accuracy.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed computation of mixed electroweak-QCD NNLO corrections for $e^+e^- o HZ$, improving theoretical predictions for future collider experiments.

Findings

Corrections reach about 1% of the Born-level cross section.

Corrections are significant for both unpolarized and polarized Z bosons.

Inclusion of these corrections is essential for future precision measurements.

Abstract

The prospective Higgs factories, exemplified by ILC, FCC-ee and CEPC, plan to conduct the precision Higgs measurements at the $e^+e^-$ center-of-mass energy around 250 GeV. The cross sections for the dominant Higgs production channel, the Higgsstrahlung process, can be measured to a (sub-) percent accuracy. Merely incorporating the well-known next-to-leading order (NLO) electroweak corrections appears far from sufficient to match the unprecedented experimental precision. In this work, we make an important advancement toward this direction by investigating the mixed electroweak-QCD corrections to $e^+e^-\to HZ$ at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) for both unpolarized and polarized $Z$ boson. The corrections turn out to reach one percent level of the Born-order results, thereby must be incorporated in the future confrontation with the data.